One of the popular urban legends about casinos is that they pump pure oxygen into the casino floor air to keep players awake. This isn’t what they do, although there are other more subtle things they do, to build the ambiance.
Pure oxygen is flammable, so it’s not advisable to begin with, and given the size of a casino floor it would take a lot of oxygen to accomplish this task, with lots of open spaces connected to a casino floor that would also dilute it. Cold air however, does help to keep you awake, which is why Brian’s always freezing on the casino floor, and often wearing one of his hoodies.
Casinos are more apt to pump in fragrances as part of the unique ambiance of the casino itself. In fact, the fragrances, like casino carpets and other unique design details, tend to be specific and unique to a single casino property.
Lots of various casino decisions, like the lack of clocks or windows, the choice of carpets and the difficulty navigating from one end of a casino to another are often mentioned as ways of keeping players playing. In some countries like Australia, they must by law display the time where players can see it!
The games themselves tend to do a pretty good job of keeping people playing – so many players will arrive at a location like Las Vegas late at night and still muster up the energy to play once they arrive, for instance.
Often times these observations are merely players trying to attach causality to something they already do, vs. something that’s designed to keep them there. Casinos aren’t hiding the bathrooms as a way to keep you playing by making you walk through all the machines.
But it’s one of those topics many players love to think about, and you can rest assured the casinos aren’t doing anything dangerous like pumping pure oxygen onto the casino floor just to get you to play a little bit longer.
unless it’s changed its not strictly true about clock in Oz. The law isn’t that there needs to be a clock on each machine, the law is that every player must be able to see a clock from where they are gambling. (and it needs to be within 10 minutes of the official time). Interesting fact that the fine for having a clock that is more than 10 mins out is less than having no clock so we had to be extra careful if changing batteries or if a clock was broken as it was better to have a wrong clock than no clock, so a broken clock would be put back up until fixed) To help facilitate operatirs not being fined manufacturers now put a time on the screen.
Hey Barry! That’s a great point about Australia-specific regulations; that was a bit of a US-centric comment in the article about the lack of clocks but other jurisdictions do have rules that are more player-friendly on that note!
no worries. all jurisdictions have different rules as you know. you actually put in Australia it is law lol, it wasn’t a us centric comment. no drama’s
Ah yes I see what you mean now – I was looking at another line in the article. I’ll adjust based on your note, thank you!